The Gospel According to Christ: The Message of Jesus and How We Missed It

Foreword

After reading Mark Stelter’s book, you will read the Gospels with a whole new understanding and perspective. You will see Jesus for who He really is as He claimed to be. Writing with the passion and conviction of the Apostle Paul to the infant churches of the New Testament era, Stelter confronts the church today about the subtlety of a secular gospel that presents a different Jesus and a different gospel than the one clearly presented in the Scriptures.

I challenge you to explore the following pages with an open mind. Take off the cultural glasses that so often blur your image and refocus on the glory of Christ and the wonder of His message. He didn’t come to offer us a better life. He came to offer us eternal life. For the past seventeen years, I have proclaimed that message as Pastor of Woodlands Church. I never cease to be amazed at the power of the Gospel that still changes lives. It’s a power beyond us. If willpower worked, we wouldn’t need God’s power. By His own design, Jesus knew that what He taught would require His power to accomplish. That’s what gives the Christian faith its vitality. It’s Christ in you that makes the difference.

Kerry Shook

Founder and Senior Pastor

Woodlands Church

Acknowledgments

The great vice of acknowledging some is that I am bound to omit many deserving of acknowledgment. This is offset by the great virtue that at least a few of the many I owe much to will receive appropriate recognition.

I begin with my mother and father, who taught me how to write, encouraged me to write, and have lovingly read everything I have ever written—whether it was worth reading or not!

Several people have carefully read and made insightful comments on the many drafts of this book, including Kay Stelter, Kimberly Stelter, and my copyeditor, Debbie Cox. I would also like to thank Kathy and Dennis Driggers, James Doherty, Dr. Craig Livingston, Scott Stelter, and Dr. Mark Whitten for engaging in countless hours of theological discussion about the many challenging issues raised by this book.

Four of the finest ministers anyone could ever pray for have been mercifully provided to me in the persons of Tierce Green, Chad Karger, Randy Reeves, and Kerry Shook. It is difficult to tell where their thoughts end and mine begin in these pages—and in my faith.

Three institutions deserve recognition: Liberty Baptist Theological Seminary, where I studied as I wrote this book; Lone Star College, which granted me a sabbatical to complete my work; and Woodlands Church, which inspired me by its faithful delivery of the word of Christ.

Finally, this book would not be in your hands without Christian Amondson taking a chance on a new author. I hope I have not let you down, Christian!

Introduction

I begin this book by making the audacious assertion that millions of Christians believe in a faith that is not Christianity. Implicit in this claim is the equally audacious assertion that I know what authentic Christianity is. Any good critical thinker would ask, "Why should I care what you think Christianity is?" Happily, I have an answer for those critics: You should not care what I think Christianity is—but you should care profoundly what Jesus thinks Christianity is.

This raises the next question: How do we know what Jesus thinks Christianity is? My answer is that the best (and very nearly only) evidence we have of what Jesus said is recorded in the New Testament. In this postmodern age of cynicism and doubt, there will be those who reject the authenticity of the Gospels. My position is that whether one believes the Gospels are accurate accounts of what Jesus said or not—they are all we have! That is why I define Christianity as the teachings of Christ as his words are recorded in the Gospels. That may not be a satisfactory answer for some, but I know of no better way to determine what the teachings of Christ are but by reading the Gospels.

At this stage the next challenge I generally encounter is this: How can we know what Jesus meant? Aren’t his words open to limitless interpretations? Aren’t the teachings of Jesus vague and contradictory?

I am less sympathetic to those questions. While there is some vagueness in some of the passages in the Gospels, as there is in any book, the principle messages of Christ are quite clear. Often those who claim that the words of Jesus are unclear are those who have either not seriously studied his words, or those who have decided—for whatever reason—that they prefer his words to be unclear. The reasons one would prefer ambiguity in the message of Christ are numerous and it does not take much imagination to come up with a lengthy list!

What I propose in this book is that many millions of Christians are simply wrong about the message of Christ, as that message is revealed in the Gospels. This book will conduct an exegesis of the teachings of Christ. It will be full, complete, and done in context. If one reads the words of Christ without any preconceived notions of what he thinks he already knows Jesus said, or without any interference with what he wished Jesus said, I think he will find that the message of Christ is as clear as it is revolutionary.

The authentic message of Christ—read without secular or sectarian lenses—is inspiring, wonderful, and transformative. It is also counter-intuitive, radical, and in contradiction to some of the beliefs most deeply engrained in us.

Make no mistake. There is a struggle in the hearts and minds of men about who they are—and who God is. My hope and prayer is that this book will serve on the side of Truth in this battle that has raged on ever since that day man made the fateful decision to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

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Christianity in Crisis

Millions of Christians believe in a faith that is demonstrably not Christianity. They think they are Christians, but their understanding of what Jesus taught is fatally flawed. Ask these people what they think the message of Christ was, and they will say something like this: The most important things are to be a good person, help your fellow man, and make the world a better place. Jesus was a great moral teacher who showed us the way to live better lives.

I call this Secular Christianity, and the people who hold these views are probably good citizens and great neighbors. They have, however, completely misunderstood the essential teachings of Jesus Christ. Whatever else may be said of Secular Christianity, it is most assuredly not what Jesus taught.

Jesus never said he was a great moral teacher showing us a better way. He proclaimed to be the divine Son of God who is the way. Jesus did not promise a better life—he promised eternal life. Christianity is not, at its core, about making the world a better place. It is about the salvation of our souls—a salvation unearned by man—but given through the grace of God and love of Christ. Understanding this is essential to understanding the mission of Jesus.

Secular Christianity is achieving what the enemies of Christianity have been striving to achieve for two thousand years: It is removing Jesus, the Son of God who provides salvation to mankind—and replacing him with Jesus, the wise moral teacher who shows us how to make our world a better place. It is replacing the concepts of sin, redemption, and salvation with the more palatable and pluralistic concepts of tolerance, compassion, and human progress. This revision of Jesus is historically inaccurate, theologically unsound, and spiritually bankrupt. It is an attempt to have something that never was and never can be: It is Christianity without Christ.

The desire to improve the material lives of men in this world is a good thing, but in its very goodness the seed of evil dwells. The love of man becomes a sin when we place it above the love of God. Jesus made it clear that the first and greatest commandment is to Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind (Matt 22:37). Jesus repeatedly warns us that to love man and this world more than we love God and his kingdom is our greatest temptation—and our worst sin.

Throughout the Gospels Jesus tells us over twenty times to place nothing before the kingdom of God. Not family, not friends, not country—not mankind. That is why, of the thirty-nine parables told in the Gospels, only one parable is about our relationships with our fellow man—the other thirty-eight are about the kingdom of God. That is why Jesus talks of loving our fellow man twelve times in the Gospels, but tells us about the kingdom of God over one-hundred times!

The consequences of placing the progress of man above the kingdom of God are disastrous. If the betterment of mankind is the highest goal and greatest good, then how we reach that destination is of little consequence. Some may find that Christianity is the best path toward this goal; others may find Judaism the preferred path, still others Islam or Buddhism. Some may conclude that democratic capitalism is the surest path to human progress; others might side with socialism or communism. Most Secular Christians borrow a little from each of these faiths and philosophies, believing that if any particular principle of any particular faith seems unhelpful to the progress of man, they should discard that principle as archaic and passé. The Secular Christian will not be encumbered with what they consider ancient dogma that is no longer relevant to modern man!

Yet, without any foundation to rest their moral house upon, the structure soon begins to crumble. Who is to say what is right and what is wrong? How do we know which faith offers the best path to the progress of man? If the progress of man is the ultimate end, should we not abandon the commands of the Scriptures when they appear to interfere with the progress of man?

And what do Secular Christians do with Jesus? If the purpose of Jesus was merely to teach us a better way to live, how is he any more relevant to our lives than Socrates, Buddha, or Gandhi?

The consequences of these misunderstandings are devastating. Some people blindly accept the teachings of Secular Christianity and live their entire lives ignorant of the authentic message of Jesus Christ. More inquisitive Secular Christians question their faith and find it to be incoherent as a philosophy and impractical as a way of life. This realization has left millions of Secular Christians empty, frustrated, and confused. Their hearts want to believe, but their heads tell them their faith is irrational.

Unfortunately, attending church does not always clarify this confusion. In a desperate attempt to be relevant, many churches preach the Gospel of Secular Christianity. Some preach the social Gospel of redistributing wealth and liberating the oppressed. More conservative churches often view the Bible as a modern self-help book. Some ministers leave their congregation with the impression that the primary focus of Jesus Christ was that we enjoy healthy marriages, good relations with our neighbors, and successful careers. They present Jesus as some supernatural counselor—a divine Dr. Phil or an omnipotent Oprah Winfrey!

How far down the road to Secular Christianity have we traveled? Polls show that almost half of all Christians in the United States agree with the following propositions:

All people will experience the same outcome after death regardless of their religious beliefs.

The Bible, the Koran, and the Book of Mormon are all different expressions of the same spiritual truths.

It doesn’t matter what religious faith you follow because they all teach the same lessons.

If a person is generally good or does enough good things for others, they will earn a place in heaven.

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The millions of Christians who hold those views must secretly wonder if their faith makes any sense. If all faiths are essentially the same and if eternal life is earned by doing good deeds, wouldn’t being a good person be better than being a Christian? Wouldn’t it make more sense to give people food instead of Bibles? Isn’t the love of man the greatest commandment and our best hope for salvation?

The confusion caused by all of this is understandable. The reason Christianity does not make sense to so many people is because the Christianity they are familiar with is not Christianity.

Real Christianity can only be known by knowing Jesus Christ. One way to know Jesus is to read what he said. In this book we will engage in a thorough review of the words of Christ—in context and in their entirety. We will be engaged in a journey for the truth. It will be a rigorous journey, at times disturbing and unsettling, at times joyful and triumphant. That is the nature of any search for the truth. This search will reveal that Secular Christianity is not merely different from what Christ taught— it is diametrically opposed to what Christ taught!

The following comparison summarizes the two worldviews:

We are truly at a critical stage in the history of Christianity and do not have much time to correct our mistakes before the truth of Christ is supplanted by the lie of Secular Christianity. My hope and prayer is that when authentic Christianity is revealed through a thoughtful analysis of the words of Christ, the allure of Secular Christianity will be defeated by the truth.

Come, let us reason together, says the Lord (Isa 1:18).² So we shall. Now is the time to embark on a serious study of the words of Jesus Christ. Through this study we will have our minds enlightened and our hearts uplifted. And when we discover authentic Christianity—the Christianity of Jesus Christ—we will find that Christianity works, that it makes sense. Then all those misunderstandings circulating in our minds and in our culture will begin to fade away like fog in the sunlight, and that as Jesus promised, we will know the truth and the truth will set us free!

1. Barna, What Americans Believe, April 18, 2011.

2. Isa 1:18, Barker, Holy Bible, New International Version, 1984.

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The Rise of Secular Christianity

The Greatest Threat to Christianity:

Secular Christianity

Christians are fighting the wrong battle. While Christians defend the faith from attacks by atheists, a more serious threat goes unnoticed and unaddressed. Aggressive atheists are most certainly annoying. The titles of some popular anti-God literature, such as God Is Not Great and The God Delusion betray their bias and viciousness.¹ However, most of the atheist propaganda on the market is more heat than light. The angry diatribes spewed forth in these books are often intentionally offensive and unintentionally irrational.

Attacks on the faith by atheists have had little impact on our collective belief in God, and with good reason. People sense that a Supreme Being exists. We feel God in our hearts, and we see God in the wonders of his creation. We look to the starry skies above and cannot begin to fathom the billions and billions of stars in the galaxy. We wonder in amazement at the astounding fact that, as best we can tell, in this unimaginably vast universe we are the only living things. That in itself is so scientifically unlikely (yet apparently true) that we should consider it a miracle.

We ponder why anything exists at all. Why is there anything? Why is there something instead of nothing? We contemplate the beginning of the universe, the beginning of time itself, and cannot get past the fact that there had to be something outside of time to create time. There had to be something outside of the universe to create the universe.

As we ponder these thoughts further, we come to the realization that whatever created the universe had to be pre-existent. If we read the best and most recent scientific theories on cosmology we learn that what we feel in our hearts is consistent with what our most brilliant scientists think in their heads. They call their theory the Big Bang, we call it God, but the more we learn, the closer our scientific theories get to our theological theories: namely, that at some point—before time, before space, and before matter—the universe was created. Scientists agree on this, ² but they have no answer for how something was created from absolutely nothing.³ Christians do: We call this eternal creator God.

We look the other direction, away from the unimaginably large to the unimaginably small—to DNA, the building blocks of our very existence. Again, the more science learns about the incredibly intricate design of our molecular structure, the closer science and theology come. Dr. Francis Collins, former atheist and director of the Human Genome Project, found his faith in God strengthened through his work as a scientist.

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Wherever we turn, to the stars in the cosmos, the DNA in our genes, or the love in our hearts, we find God. Atheism has not been able to disturb this intuitive knowledge of a Creator. That is why 95 percent of Americans say they believe in God or a universal spirit and less than 5 percent of Americans consider themselves atheists.⁵ Atheism, at least as a formal disbelief in God, is dead. It is not a serious threat to Christianity in the United States.

Indeed, not only do we believe in God, but we claim to believe in a Judeo-Christian God. While we may not be formally a Christian nation, we undoubtedly are a nation of Christians. Over 75 percent of Americans consider themselves Christians, and the largest single group of Christians in America are self-described Evangelical Protestants.⁶ In spite of what we hear about our wildly diverse religious melting pot, the truth is that Jews, Buddhists, Muslims, and Hindus combined make up only 3.4 percent of the American population.

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This is why an assault on Christianity from outside her ranks is not nearly as significant as the assault from within the faith. What is a threat to Christianity in America is not the 5 percent of the population who do not believe in God or the 3.4 percent of the population who adhere to other religions. The real threat is Secular Christianity. Unlike atheism, Secular Christianity counts among its adherents a large and growing number of people who adhere to a faith that they believe is Christianity—but that demonstrably is not.

It’s All About Us

The major distinction between Secular Christianity and authentic Christianity is this: Secular Christianity is about mankind; Christianity is about God.

Rick Warren, author of The Purpose Driven Life, begins his bestselling book with the words: It’s not about you.⁸ This profound but simple statement shocked a culture that had been raised on the promise that everything was, indeed, all about you. From the moment of our births, we are bombarded with the message that it is all about us. Parents devote their lives to catering to their children’s every whim, mistaking permissiveness, overprotection, and extravagance for love. Advertisers promise us happiness in the form of automobiles, homes, clothing, jewelry, food, and countless other material items—and they promise it to us when we want it, in the color we want, with no money down and delivered tonight. Teachers work tirelessly toward improving our self-esteem; counselors and psychologists speak of self-actualization, self-awareness, and self-fulfillment; and bookstores sell self-help, self-improvement, and self-understanding books by the tens of millions.

It is almost impossible to avoid the belief that the world exists for our pleasure and that the highest human goal—happiness in this life—is a birthright to all. Christianity is not immune to this culture of self. There are ministers whose sermons are hard to distinguish from a motivational speech by a self-help guru. They preach messages on improving our relationships with our employers, our neighbors, and our spouses. Some preach the Prosperity Gospel and assure us that Christ wants us to be rich. Others proclaim that Jesus wants us to be healthy, or happy, or successful in our careers. It seems the only thing some modern ministers don’t talk about is God. God, it seems, is not as relevant a topic as self-fulfillment, self-actualization, and self-awareness. Richard John Neuhaus, one of the most influential intellectuals of the twentieth-century wrote, In all our promotion of empowerment, fulfillment, self-esteem and self-actualization, we should know what we are doing. We are rejecting the very heart of what it means to be a Christian.

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The theological meaning of Rick Warren’s proclamation, it’s not about you, is much more complicated than it appears. It is not a simple plea for us to be less selfish and more concerned with the welfare of others. Concern for others only removes our self-centeredness by one degree. Rather than being all about me, it is all about us. This is a great leap forward in social awareness, but it is not Christianity. Being other-centered means showing love, compassion, and kindness to our fellow man. Every Christian should be loving, compassionate, and kind—but that is not what makes them a Christian. While love, compassion, and kindness are most assuredly Christian virtues—they are not exclusively Christian virtues! It is arrogant and historically incorrect to presume that mankind never knew the virtues of love, compassion, and forgiveness before Jesus walked the earth. Philosophers, lawgivers, and ethicists prior to the birth of Jesus and after the death of Jesus have extolled such virtues. That, in itself, does not make them Christians. Indeed, many such philosophers and sages were certainly not Christians. One may associate great moral teachings with Confucius, Socrates, Buddha, or Gandhi—yet none of them were Christians. Therefore, the distinguishing factor of Christianity cannot be that Christians show love, compassion, and forgiveness to their fellow man. Millions of non-Christians are loving, compassionate, and forgiving. To claim otherwise would be insulting and plainly in error.

To claim that the difference between Christian and non-Christians is that Christians love their fellow man is to reveal a misunderstanding of what it means to be a Christian. What then, distinguishes Christians from non-Christians? In a word—Jesus. Christians believe that Jesus Christ is their Lord and Savior. This belief is what gives purpose and meaning to a Christian’s life. It is what gives Christians hope and joy. It is the reason Christians should be loving, compassionate, and forgiving. Not because man, of himself, is worthy of such affection, but because God loves men and God commands us to love one another. Christian love should always be a reflection of the love of God and Christian service should always be done for God’s glory.

Secular Christians have confused the creature with the Creator. They have imagined that because God loves us, we are worthy of his love. Secular Christians have forgotten that God’s love for us says much more about God’s mercy than it does about our virtue!

The Secular Christian view is that man is the highest cause and his improvement the greatest good. Christians believe that God is the highest cause and the love of God the greatest good. Man’s worth is derived from the fact that man was created in the image of God. Simply put, God does not love us because we are worthy. We are worthy because God loves us.

We cannot achieve purpose, meaning, or worth without God. Indeed, the history of the world is little more than the tragic tale of man’s attempt to do so.

Secular Christianity: Man As The Measure of All Things

Professor Alvin Reid reports in Radically Unchurched that 30 percent of Americans are Christian in name only (giving no evidence of any consistent practice of their faith) and that another 41 percent of the American population report no religious affiliation at all.¹⁰ Similarly, George Hunter, in Church for the Unchurched, writes that approximately 120 million Americans have navigated their whole lives beyond the serious influence of Christian churches.

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These millions of nominal Christians are particularly susceptible to the allure of Secular Christianity. One of the leading proponents of Secular Christianity is former Episcopal bishop, John Shelby Spong. Spong’s national best-seller, Why Christianity Must Change or Die, has been widely praised by academics and religious leaders. It typifies Secular Christian beliefs:

The theistic God has no work to do. The power once assigned to this God is now explained in countless other ways. The theistic God is all but unemployed. . . . Human beings have evolved to the point where the theistic God concept can be and must be cast aside. . . . The most obvious candidate for dismissal in my mind is . . . that image of Jesus as the divine rescuer.

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What is most disturbing about Spong’s views is that he makes these proclamations as a Christian. While the loud and arrogant rants against Christianity by atheists the likes of Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and Christopher Hitchens are annoying, Spong is unnerving. His views on the faith have garnered much positive acclaim from within the Christian community. After serving twenty-four years as bishop of Newark he now teaches at Harvard. Publishers Weekly declared Why Christianity Must Change or Die as the best book of the year. His views have been praised by theologians at Cambridge, Oxford, and Harvard and by clergymen around the world.¹³ This is why it is important that we are clear about what Spong professes. Simply stated, Spong proclaims that the theistic God is dead. According to this former bishop of the Episcopal Church, the God who is a supernatural being is no longer plausible to postmodern man. As is expected, the death of God leads to the death of biblical principles of morality as well. Again, Spong in his own words:

An ethical system. . . grounded in [a theistic God] has become in our day quite obviously doomed. One cannot speak cogently to the ethical concerns of this generation by quoting two-thousand- to four-thousand-year old authorities. . . . No longer is it deemed adequate to assert but the Ten Commandments state or but the Bible teaches. . . . All they do today is to proclaim that the one who uses this tactic has nothing worthwhile to say to the current ethical dilemmas. There is no credible external deity existing today on whose perceived will . . . we can base our ethical decision making. . . . The God who once was perceived as undergirding these primitive assumptions has been taken from us and destroyed by the march of time and the explosion of knowledge.

The death of the God of theism, therefore, has removed from our world the traditional basis of ethics. That is the conclusion we are forced to draw.

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With the death of God and the traditional basis of ethics, whence does Spong suggest we find guidelines for ethical behavior? In ourselves, of course. Man becomes both the accused and judge of his own actions and the appropriateness of those actions are